With that he bade the old Lion and his old wife farewell and pushed on into the farther wilds. The mountains grew more and more rugged, the plains more parched and barren, and the Youngest Son was hard put to it to find food from day to day.
Once when he was crossing a desert three eagles swooped down upon him and it was all he could do to fight them off. He slashed at them with his sword and succeeded in cutting off the beak of one, a wing of another, and a leg of the third. He put these three things in his bag as trophies.
He came at last to a hut where an old woman was baking cakes on the hearth.
"God bless you, granny!" he said. "Can you give me a bite of supper and shelter for the night?"
The old woman shook her head.
"My boy, you had better not stop here. I have three daughters and if they were to come home and find you here, they'd kill you."
But the Youngest Brother insisted that he was not afraid and at last the old woman let him stay. She hid him in the corner behind the firewood and warned him to keep still.
Presently the three eagles whom he had maimed came flying into the hut. The old woman put a bowl of milk on the table, the birds dipped in the milk, and lo! their feather shirts opened and they stepped out three maidens. One of them had lost her lips, one an arm, and the third a leg.
"Ah!" they cried to their mother, "see what has befallen us! If only the youth who maimed us would return the beak and the wing and the leg that he hacked off, we would tell him anything he wants to know."
At that the Youngest Brother stepped out from behind the firewood and said: